Shwopping for mums

Thank you to everyone who shwopped as part of our Mother's Day campaign. As part of our ongoing Shwopping movement in collaboration with Oxfam, we joined forces with celebrity mums Zoe Ball, Joanna Lumley and Abbey Clancy for our 'Love, Mum' campaign to raise money for mothers living in poverty around the world.

Shwopping is about bringing an old item of clothing into an M&S store with you (even if it’s not from M&S) each time you come to buy something new. You can put your old items into a ‘Shwop Drop’ box (you’ll find these by the tills in most M&S stores). All clothing goes to our partners Oxfam, and they'll either resell it in one of their stores or on their website, forward it on to those who need it in the Third World, or recycle the fibres to make new material (which businesses like M&S can make into new clothes). Absolutely nothing goes to landfill. Oxfam will use the money raised to help people around the world overcome poverty.

Shwopping is now a permanent fixture in our stores, so any time your local store is open, you can go shwopping!

Not currently. However, we are looking for ways to make this happen, so watch this space!

We're making it even easier to shwop, by giving our furniture teams special shwopping bags to carry with them. So, if you like, when we come to deliver your new furniture, we can pick up the clothes you no longer want at the same time. Just fill the bag and hand it back to the delivery team, and they'll take it away with them. Simple!

You can shwop any item of clothing, from any retailer, including shoes, handbags, jewellery and bras (these are particularly valuable to Oxfam as they are very much in demand in the Third World). Remember, even if can’t be sold on, the fibres may be perfect for recycling – so don’t ignore those holey jumpers – shwop them! You can choose to shwop a single item or multiple items.

All clothes shwopped at M&S are given to Oxfam. Oxfam then:

• Resells clothes – in shops, online, at festivals or through overseas enterprises, like Frip Ethique in Senegal.

• Reuses clothes – garments that can’t be worn again are sold to designers who restyle them for use in new collections.

• Recycles clothes – even if they don’t make the grade, old clothes are never sent to landfill. Instead, they’re sold in bulk to reprocessing companies where they could be reborn as mattress filling, carpet underlay or as a last resort, incinerated. Some of the garments will even be turned in to new fibres for use in new garments.

• Not a stitch is wasted – every penny raised helps fight poverty around the world.

Approximately 500,000 tonnes or 1 billion items of clothing are sent to landfill each year - that’s 114,000 per hour. Neither the planet’s landfill sites, nor its resources, are infinite and we know that placing unwanted clothing items into the bin (and therefore into landfill) when they could be recycled or re-used – is not sustainable. We hope this project will help see a move away from ‘disposable’ fashion where we throw away clothes when we’ve had enough of them.

No, you can just bring your item/s in and drop it in the Shwop Drop.

Shwopping is about challenging and changing the way we all shop. We’re not asking you to stop buying clothes, rather aiming to create a ‘buy one, give one’ culture, where reusing, recycling or reselling old clothes becomes the norm. Half a million tonnes of clothing end up in UK landfill every year and we all agree this can’t continue. So instead of storing up problems for tomorrow, M&S is calling on the UK to become a nation of shwoppers, where we breathe new life into and reuse old wardrobe favourites.

Shwopping is about encouraging people to think more about what they do with their old unwanted clothes and trying to help reduce the millions of clothes that are thrown away every year. People will always buy new clothes from an array of shops and we want people to take old clothes back to us or to Oxfam or to any other charity shop. We hope that this will raise awareness of the landfill issue, and encourage charity shop donations and increased recycling of textiles in the UK.

We have run One Day Wardrobe Clear-outs over the past two years and they have been really successful. However we know that there are still approximately 114,000 garments thrown away in the UK every hour; and we want to do even more to encourage and help our staff and customers recycle unwanted clothes rather than throw them away. Working in partnership with Oxfam we believe shwopping will help increase the volume of unwanted clothes that are recycled and reduce the volume thrown away. Our customers have told us that their main ethical concern for retailers is waste. So we want to turn the tide on waste, and to start the journey towards making our fashion business truly sustainable. Our eventual aim is to help to recycle as many clothes as we sell – that’s hundreds of millions of items each year! What has this got to do with Plan A? Plan A is M&S’s environmental and ethical programme which aims to make M&S the world’s most sustainable major retailer by 2015. We launched Plan A in January 2007, setting out 100 commitments to achieve in 5 years. We’ve now extended Plan A to 180 commitments to achieve by 2015. Through Plan A, we are working with our customers and our suppliers to combat climate change, reduce waste, use sustainable raw materials, trade ethically, and help our customers to lead healthier lifestyles. As part of Plan A, M&S has committed to help customers recycle over 20 million items of clothing a year by 2015. Click here for more information on Plan A.

We are delighted to be working with Joanna Lumley as the new Face of our eco and ethical programme, Plan A, and of the shwopping initiative. Joanna is much loved personality in the UK and also a hugely respected campaigner. Our customers have told us how much they like her and respect the campaign work she has done. We are proud she is working with us in helping change the way customers do their shopping forever.

We hope as many of our customers as possible will start shwopping as your participation will help give old clothes a future, clearing your wardrobe space while reducing the amount of items thrown into UK landfill. We hope that together we can drive a clothes recycling revolution that will see shwopping become the norm. We all have the power here to become part of the solution.

*TERMS & CONDITIONS:
Selected stores only. £5 voucher redeemable when you spend £35 or more on clothing, home and beauty at M&S until 18th April 2014. Excludes schoolwear, sale and clearance items, Made to Measure Shirts and Suits, Made to Order Curtains and Roman Blinds, gift cards, gift vouchers, gift experiences, personalised cards, M&S Outlet Online, M&S for Business and M&S tailoring services. Valid at marksandspencer.com or in selected Marks & Spencer stores in the UK (excluding Marks & Spencer stores located in airports, railway stations, motorway services and hospitals, and BP Connect stores). Cannot be used in conjunction with any other M&S discount voucher or code. Online discount will be shown when you add qualifying item(s) to your shopping basket and enter the promotion code on the front of this voucher when prompted before 23:59:59 on the promotion closing date. Spend £35, save £5 can only be redeemed once online by the same account holder within the period of validity (even if you have more than one voucher code). Online orders must have the same delivery address for promotion to apply. Discount does not apply to delivery charges. Please check the relevant delivery terms and conditions online. Valid in store on presentation of this original voucher at time of purchase. Original voucher must be handed in for in store redemption. The voucher can only be used once in a single transaction in store. One voucher only per transaction. Voucher is strictly non-transferable and cannot be sold or exchanged for cash. Cannot be used to pay Credit Card or Chargecard balances. Refunds will take into account this discount. M&S reserves the right to reject this voucher/code with reasonable cause.

^ The UK Government will match the value of everything you donate to the Mother Appeal, doubling the difference you're making. For the value of items donated or shwopped and money donated between 31 December 2013 to 31 March 2014; where items donated as part of the appeal are sold through Oxfam's GB shops before 30 April 2014, up to a maximum total value raised of £5 million. Clothing donations can be made in Oxfam shops and participating M&S stores in England, Scotland and Wales.